Grafana Has a Free API: Here's How to Use It for Dashboard Automation

#grafana #monitoring #api #devops

Grafana isn't just a visualization tool — it has a complete REST API that lets you create dashboards, manage alerts, query data sources, and automate your entire observability stack programmatically.

Why Use the Grafana API?

Automate dashboard creation for new services
Sync dashboards across environments (dev/staging/prod)
Manage alerts and notification channels via code
Build custom monitoring portals for your team

Getting Started

Generate an API key in Grafana: Configuration > API Keys > Add:

export GRAFANA_URL="http://localhost:3000"
export GRAFANA_TOKEN="your-api-key"

# List all dashboards
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_TOKEN" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/search?type=dash-db" | jq '.[] | {title: .title, uid: .uid, url: .url}'

Create a Dashboard Programmatically

import requests

GRAFANA_URL = "http://localhost:3000"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": "Bearer your-api-key", "Content-Type": "application/json"}

def create_dashboard(title, panels):
    dashboard = {
        "dashboard": {
            "title": title,
            "panels": panels,
            "refresh": "5s",
            "time": {"from": "now-1h", "to": "now"}
        },
        "overwrite": False
    }
    resp = requests.post(f"{GRAFANA_URL}/api/dashboards/db", json=dashboard, headers=HEADERS)
    return resp.json()

panels = [
    {
        "title": "CPU Usage",
        "type": "timeseries",
        "gridPos": {"h": 8, "w": 12, "x": 0, "y": 0},
        "targets": [{"expr": "rate(process_cpu_seconds_total[5m]) * 100", "refId": "A"}]
    },
    {
        "title": "Memory Usage",
        "type": "timeseries",
        "gridPos": {"h": 8, "w": 12, "x": 12, "y": 0},
        "targets": [{"expr": "process_resident_memory_bytes / 1024 / 1024", "refId": "A"}]
    },
    {
        "title": "Request Rate",
        "type": "stat",
        "gridPos": {"h": 4, "w": 6, "x": 0, "y": 8},
        "targets": [{"expr": "rate(http_requests_total[5m])", "refId": "A"}]
    }
]

result = create_dashboard("My Service Monitoring", panels)
print(f"Dashboard created: {result.get('url')}")

Manage Alerts

def create_alert_rule(name, expr, threshold, for_duration="5m"):
    rule = {
        "name": name,
        "condition": "last()",
        "data": [{"refId": "A", "queryType": "", "model": {"expr": expr}}],
        "noDataState": "NoData",
        "execErrState": "Error",
        "for": for_duration,
        "annotations": {"summary": f"{name} triggered"},
        "labels": {"severity": "warning"}
    }
    resp = requests.post(f"{GRAFANA_URL}/api/v1/provisioning/alert-rules", json=rule, headers=HEADERS)
    return resp.json()

create_alert_rule("High CPU", "rate(process_cpu_seconds_total[5m]) * 100 > 80", 80)
create_alert_rule("High Memory", "process_resident_memory_bytes > 1e9", 1000000000)

Export and Sync Dashboards

import json
import os

def export_all_dashboards(output_dir="dashboards"):
    os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)
    search = requests.get(f"{GRAFANA_URL}/api/search?type=dash-db", headers=HEADERS).json()

    for dash in search:
        full = requests.get(f"{GRAFANA_URL}/api/dashboards/uid/{dash['uid']}", headers=HEADERS).json()
        filepath = os.path.join(output_dir, f"{dash['uid']}.json")
        with open(filepath, 'w') as f:
            json.dump(full['dashboard'], f, indent=2)
        print(f"Exported: {dash['title']} -> {filepath}")

def import_dashboards(input_dir="dashboards"):
    for filename in os.listdir(input_dir):
        if filename.endswith('.json'):
            with open(os.path.join(input_dir, filename)) as f:
                dashboard = json.load(f)
            dashboard['id'] = None
            payload = {"dashboard": dashboard, "overwrite": True}
            resp = requests.post(f"{GRAFANA_URL}/api/dashboards/db", json=payload, headers=HEADERS)
            print(f"Imported: {dashboard.get('title')} -> {resp.status_code}")

Query Data Sources

# List all data sources
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_TOKEN" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/datasources" | jq '.[] | {name: .name, type: .type, url: .url}'

# Query Prometheus via Grafana
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $GRAFANA_TOKEN" \
  "$GRAFANA_URL/api/ds/query" \
  -d '{"queries":[{"refId":"A","expr":"up","datasourceId":1}],"from":"now-1h","to":"now"}'

Real-World Use Case

A platform team automated dashboard creation for every new microservice. When a team deploys a new service, a CI/CD hook calls the Grafana API to create a standard monitoring dashboard — CPU, memory, request rate, error rate, and latency. 200+ services, zero manual dashboard setup.